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Cyber strike and robot weapons: Can the UK dominate the Fifth Domain of war?

The Conservative gov't promised an "offensive cyber capability." Let's take a closer look.

Lewis Page
- Dec 15, 2015 8:32 am UTC

Welcoming our new robot overlords

Cyber strikes, then, do appear to have real military applications. “Cyber," or more accurately information and technological warfare, has long been hailed as the fifth domain of war alongside land, sea, air, and space—and now it would certainly seem that there's actually some truth to this.

The other thing that everyone’s talking about in military tech terms these days is drones. The military hate the term “drone” almost as much as some IT types hate the term “cyber,” but in both cases it would seem to be a matter of lumping it: both terms are clearly both here to stay.

Use of the term “drone” these days usually refers to an aircraft such as the well-known Reaper—formerly known as the Predator—in service with both the US and UK. The Reaper is a relatively inexpensive unmanned aeroplane powered by a turboprop engine. It can fly high enough to be safe from all but the most powerful ground-based missiles, but it is usually cold meat if such powerful missiles—or worse still, enemy fighters—are on hand. It is useful both as a surveillance platform and for airstrikes, being well able to carry heavy smartbombs as well as the more surgical Hellfire missile.

An alternative to the Reaper, if there is deemed to be a threat from powerful missiles or fighters, is the Tomahawk. Like the Reaper it is ostensibly an unmanned winged aeroplane. Unlike a Reaper, however, it is launched by booster rocket from a tube—usually mounted on a warship or a submarine at sea—and then flies to its target up to a thousand miles away, by way of its own little jet engine. The Tomahawk is a good bit faster than a Reaper and can fly at high subsonic speed and low altitude, making it very difficult to detect and shoot down unless one is up against top-ranked opposition with airborne radar. And of course a Tomahawk has no option to return and be reused like a Reaper.

Tomahawks, unlike Reapers, are typically beyond the control of their operators for much or all of their mission: they are, in fact, “autonomous weapons” or “AI war robots” which decide for themselves whether there is a legitimate target for them to attack once they reach their destination. This is done based on a digital image acquired by the Tomahawk once it arrives: it doesn’t (usually) just crash on a set of GPS coordinates. Upgrades are under way to let Tomahawks discriminate between legitimate and non-legitimate targets even if they are moving, rather than fixed.

The appearance of such weapons is much dreaded in some quarters. Not many people realise that they are already here, or that Tomahawks are really specialised one-shot drones. This is probably because the Tomahawk has been in service since the 1980s and is generally called a "cruise missile" rather than "one-shot drone." Nonetheless, the Tomahawk is merely a variation on the Reaper theme—or, more accurately, vice versa.

It seems pretty clear that the actual bombing part of Operation Orchard could just as easily have been carried out using Tomahawks or maybe Reapers. The Israelis don’t have Tomahawks or Reapers, of course, but the US and UK do—and, furthermore, it’s also known that the Suter radar-hacking technologies have been fitted to US unmanned aircraft.

If the US or perhaps the UK had been carrying out Operation Orchard, it would seem very possible that it might have been an entirely cyber and robotic mission, with no military personnel entering Syrian airspace at all.

War by Tomahawk

The US and UK didn’t carry out Operation Orchard—but four years later in 2011, in cooperation with various allies, they did mount an air campaign above Libya. The British part of this was called Operation Ellamy.

Libya, like Syria, had a Russian-supplied air defence network. The plan was to clear this out of the way so as to allow coalition air power to eliminate Colonel Gadaffi’s tanks and other heavy weapons, giving the rebels on the ground a fighting chance. The Libyan air defence system was effectively wiped off the map in a matter of days—and it was indeed an almost entirely cyber and robotic mission.

The campaign opened with a lengthy cyber/electronic phase in which an aerial armada of US and allied spyplanes and electronic-warfare platforms—certainly including Rivet Joints and Compass Calls, among others—got the measure of the Libyan defences and prepared the ground.

The actual destruction itself commenced on March 19, involving the use of between 200 and 300 precision strikes. Almost all of these were delivered by Tomahawks launched from US and British ships and submarines off the Libyan coast. Both the RAF and USAF did manage to deliver a few weapons from manned strike aeroplanes which entered Libyan airspace, though this was largely a gratuitous act of military superiority.

Enlarge/ Two RAF Tornados, pictured over the Mediterranean Sea enroute to Libya as part of the UK's Operation Ellamy.

Following the missile barrage, the Libyan air force and air defence system were described as having been “neutralised.” (As an interesting aside, the Ministry of Defence’s press release originally used the rather off-colour term “neutered” in the URL, but it has since been altered.)

“We can operate in [Libyan] airspace with impunity,” stated the British air commander, Air Vice Marshal Greg Bagwell, four days after the first Tomahawks went in. Subsequent airstrike operations against Libyan ground forces could be, and often were, conducted by drones as well as manned jets. In some cases, the despised drones were even able to take out the remaining air defence missile systems.

Towards total electronic warfare

So the Libyan air defences had been defeated: the skies above Libya were no longer “contested” in air warfare jargon. While some manned jets were used, there is no doubt that the same results could've been achieved by fully electronic/robotic means, if the various air commanders had decided to go that route.

For everyday work against enemies who have no air weapons beyond shoulder-fired missiles, like the Taliban or ISIS/Daesh, there are even fewer reasons to risk sending in manned aircraft.

Further Reading

Supersonic, Stealthy Joint Strike Fighters—or indeed non-stealthy jet fighters like the RAF’s current Tornadoes and Eurofighter Typhoons—are certainly not as good as Reapers for operations above Afghanistan or the caliphate zone. Fighters can’t stay up as long as Reapers, nor fly as far, and they don’t offer significantly more punch. That’s not even to mention the risk of death, and associated jihadi propaganda coup, in the event of a mishap.

As we’ve seen, even when fighting openly against well-equipped enemies like the air forces of Libya and Syria, cyber weaponry is more important than supersonic speed or stealth airframes. When fighting secret wars in places like the deeply buried and hardened uranium-enrichment bunkers of the Iranian nuclear weapons programme, cyber weapons like the famous Stuxnet may be the only ones that can reach the target.

When we’ve decided it genuinely is time to blow something up, a Tomahawk, Reaper, or something similarly autonomous is nearly always going to be more usable—and far cheaper—than a supersonic manned jet, whether it has stealth or not. A Tomahawk or a Reaper will also most likely be cheaper and easier to use than a battery of artillery, or a tank, or a conventional surface warship for that matter.

Enlarge/ Two drone pilots at the RAF's new ground control station in Waddington, England.

“Cyber” and “drones” really are the modern and effective ways to make war. It’s not so much that boots on the ground are obsolete, it’s just that most of our military boots today are never “on the ground”: they’re in tanks or self-propelled guns or jet fighters or frigates, or walking about inside the massive bases and support facilities that these things require. And yes, some of these latter boots and their associated kit are indeed obsolete.

Our need for cyber strike capability isn’t just hype created by those who would like to sell cyber weapons to us. Or to put it another way, it’s certainly no more hyped than than the need for stealth fighters or frigates. If Britain is serious about being able to fight wars either secretly or openly in future, it must indeed have the ability to mount cyber attacks. And when Britain wants to use actual force, we should make sure that we have the unmanned systems—the drones—that can get the job done with the least amount of cost and risk.

All this would mean that a lot more of our boots could actually be out on the ground, too, if we wanted that.